by Carter Alan
The success of this first River Rave would inspire a new tradition to go along with WBCN’S fresh direction, with the concert growing into an annual event. Oedipus commented, “The first one, at the Hatch Shell, was good, but the great Raves occurred later, the ones at Great Woods and then Foxboro.” In future years, despite moving to these new locations that were nowhere near any river (if anything, only dirty culverts or muddy drainage ditches), the name stuck, and the River Rave became an annual expectation. Injected with steroids, the 1996 festival expanded to seventeen bands and relocated to Great Woods in Mansfield; the following year it morphed into a two-day extravaganza of thirty groups; and by 2000 the enormous digs of Foxboro Stadium were required to house the now-gargantuan affair. The unexpected success of the first event also emboldened Oedipus to create a Boston adaptation of LA sister station KROQ’S “Almost Acoustic Christmas Show,” calling it the WBCN “Christmas Rave.” Two dozen groups and artists, showcased in eight venues, from tiny T.T. the Bears in Cambridge to the Orpheum Theater downtown, performed on one night in December 1995. There had been a precedent set when ’BCN staged Peter Wolf in an unplugged holiday party in the Middle East the year before, but the Christmas Rave was a full-blown electric event featuring future household names like the Dave Matthews Band, Goo Goo Dolls, 311, Jewel, and Ben Folds Five.
The Raves of 1995 underscored WBCN’S format realignment, as did the presence of a new school of young DJS, like Shred, who had been at the station since 1988 but blossomed with the station’s concentration on new groups and alternative sounds: “’BCN was always about breaking new bands; we made the hits. And it didn’t have to be rock; even if it was a pop song and it sounded good, we’d play it anyway.” Shred’s favorite moments were meeting Damon Albarn of Blur; talking to Green Day in the ’BCN conference room; and speaking in awe backstage at Avalon with a personal hero, Johnny Cash. In ’93 Oedipus hired petite redhead Melissa Teper for the weekends and flll-ins from a small station in Marshfield where she performed as the coquettish “Siobhan,” playing tunes from the Emerald Isle. “DJ Melissa,” as she became known, answered an ad looking for Listener Line volunteers on Charles Laquidara’s show and, like so many before her, grabbed onto that dangling radio lifeline. “’BCN was great about that: giving the little guy a shot. That’s what the station was all about: finding and nurturing new talent. Even Oedipus was an intern once.” The wisecracking Harrison came to the station in ’94, joining the weekend air staff, and soon following Bill Abbate’s example of doubling as a DJ and a member of the Patriots broadcast crew. Janet Egan, guitarist in the high-profile local metal band Malachite, worked at WFNX as a DJ and local music maven before Oedipus hired her away for similar duties at ’BCN. Under her radio pseudonym “Juanita the Scene Queen,” she brought weighty street cred and experience to the lineup. Neal Robert defected from WFNX, after helming that station’s afternoon shift for seven years, making the switch even though there were no full-time jobs to move into at his new home. “I still felt I had made the right decision; I was psyched to be at ’BCN.”
By 1997, WAAF had been feuding on and off with ’BCN for thirteen years with mixed results. The Worcester station had a solid foundation of eighteen- to twenty-four-year-old males but hadn’t had much impact on “The Rock of Boston” with its lucrative core of twenty-five- to fifty-four-year-old male and female listeners. Sure, the two stations elbowed each other at times when competing for promotions with groups they shared on their playlists, but when it came to ad dollars, WBCN sat in a commanding position, even before the arrival of Howard Stern. However, with ’BCN’S realignment away from album-oriented rock and toward “modern rock,” shifting to a younger target demo of eighteen- to thirty-four-year olds, the presence of harder-rocking WAAF in the mix became undeniable. Then, the odds changed again in favor of the Worcester station as a new tag team of Opie and Anthony arrived from Long Island. The pair took over the afternoon slot at ‘AAF and soon demonstrated their own low-brow path to “greatness” with stunts like “Whip ‘Em Out Wednesdays,” in which women were encouraged to expose their breasts to male drivers. The campaign became so popular in just a few weeks that the state police had to take a stand in response to those citing safety concerns over lapses of driver attention. To assuage their opponents, WAAF’S managers slapped the pair’s wrists by suspending them for two weeks. ’BCN’S Shred reasoned, “We had Stern, so we opened up the can of worms. There certainly wasn’t any good taste involved; it was how far these jocks could push the limits.”
“I listened to Howard Stern and actually enjoyed him,” said Steve Strick, “but I was not a fan of Opie and Anthony. With Howard, there was some sophistication there and some professional writing going on; it wasn’t just two goons making fun of boobs.” But like or dislike their approach, the new morning team’s brand of raw humor proved effective and invasive, finding fertile ground with ‘AAF’s existing audience and then growing beyond. Eileen McNamara writing in the Boston Globe labeled “O & A” as “two witless disc jockeys at a second-rate rock radio station in Worcester”; nevertheless, this supposedly obtuse team was soon significantly impacting the radio ratings in the Boston market.
“‘AAF had always been respectful and never had the balls to actually go after the station in the way that Opie and Anthony did,” Mark Parenteau commented. “They were the first ones that really saw that ’BCN could be vulnerable.” O & A made a very clear public target of Parenteau, attacking his character relentlessly on the air. “We believed that rock and roll is sometimes stronger, if not the strongest, in afternoon drive,” WAAF’S vice president and general manager at the time Bruce Mittman pointed out. “In our research, we kept seeing the word ‘old’ in relation to ’BCN, so O & A attacked the station, and Parenteau, for being ‘old and tired.’” Although a success for nearly two decades, ’BCN’S afternoon jock was, admittedly, spending far less time living the rock and roll lifestyle than he had before: “The station was hugely successful; we were making tons of money. I lived in Hopkinton then, and I had a house in Vermont. I’d go in every day and do the show, but I didn’t hang out on the scene like I had in the past.”
“Mark became much more domestic, and there’s nothing wrong with that,” Oedipus added. “He grew up, got older, and had other responsibilities; but he lost that youthful quickness. He was still a funny bastard, but Mark was no longer relating to the younger audience.”
Opie and Anthony took it one step further and began ridiculing the veteran DJ about his homosexuality. Parenteau explained, “They attacked me for being gay, and it was uncomfortable because Oedipus had always said, ‘Don’t talk about it on the air.’ I’d mention things in double entendre, so if you were gay, you would know I was too, and if you weren’t, it could be taken another way. Oedipus didn’t think it would be good for business, nor did I, to be the gay disc jockey or the gay radio station.”
Summer ’97, goofing off with Snoop Dogg backstage at the River Rave. (Left to right) “Chachi” Loprete, Oedipus, Snoop, and Mark Parenteau. Parenteau’s days at ’BCN are numbered; he will leave within six months. Photo by Leo Gozbekian.
“So, do you take the high road and not respond to anything, then hope it goes away?” Chachi Loprete asked. “Or, do you bring yourself down and fight them on their level? We did nothing, for a long time. Parenteau kept his mouth shut through the whole thing, because how do you fight that?”
Parenteau continued, “I wanted to go balls to the wall with them over it; but of course, I would have had to acknowledge that I was gay. [But], the way the gay thing has turned out for lots of celebrities since, I don’t think it would have made any difference. In hindsight, I think it would have made great radio; it would have been no skin off my nose if everyone knew I was ‘the guy.’”
“The fact was that Mark couldn’t beat Opie and Anthony,” Oedipus countered. “At that point, he had the talent, but he didn’t have the anger. They were really nasty, and it was tough to play in their ballpark. That really c
hanged the face of it.”
“Their guerilla listeners would drive by the house, make noise, and throw cans in the driveway,” Parenteau confessed. “Suddenly I felt I had no privacy in my life, and I ended up retreating; I didn’t want to run into this ‘AAF thing all the time.”
In the winter 1997 Arbitron book, WBCN placed seventh in the market for all listeners twelve years and older, continuing to win the eighteen to thirty-four male ratings race by scoring an 11.6 to AAF’S 7.9. Still, while Howard Stern could be credited with maintaining the comfortable margin, the afternoons were definitely losing ground to Opie and Anthony’s unrelenting assault. By the summer ratings period six months later, Opie and Anthony soundly trounced the veteran in the eighteen to thirty-four male battleground by scoring a 13.3 percent audience share to his 9.4. Tensions between Oedipus and Parenteau, as they disagreed on a winning strategy, often boiled over, their clashing and flamboyant personalities reduced to shouting matches or steely episodes of silence. By the fall, Oedipus had concluded, “It was time for Mark to move on; he was no longer relating to the audience.” Parenteau was not surprised but disappointed, believing that the main reason for the cold shoulder was actually a financial one: “Within the structure of CBS they had a lot of DJS that were making a lot of money; we’re talking a quarter-million dollars a year, and in some cases even more than that. Mel was trying to pare down that cost and replace million-dollar talent with forty-thousand-dollar-a-year jobs, which he did. So, Oedipus was playing this whole Mel game at the time; he had to.” In the face of declining ratings, Oedipus and Tony Berardini chose not to renew Parenteau’s contract, which meant that the DJ was out of a job in early November ’97. “There was this whole statement [drawn up] that said I wanted to leave because I wanted to go do other things.” WBCN’S press release stated, “The venerable disc-jockey plans to take a short break from his radio show to pursue several entertainment-related opportunities that were recently presented to him.”
“That just wasn’t the case,” Parenteau refuted. “I didn’t want it to go down that way.”
Dean Johnson announced the startling news in the Boston Herald, also making clear that he didn’t believe ’BCN’S press release for a minute. “He’s the last of the station’s longtime jocks to go, the final member of a gang that once included Charles Laquidara, Matt Siegel and Ken Shelton. Here’s the real deal: Parenteau got older (he’s in his mid-40’s), WBCN’S audience got younger (its prime demographic is now men 18–34), and in these bottomline times, he’s just too expensive.” The writer was also curious that the station hadn’t announced a suitable goodbye celebration for the legendary jock: “Waiting for the big Parenteau farewell bash? Don’t hold your breath. Rather than a loud, kissy-huggy farewell week, WBCN is opting for a low-profile finale. And anyone who’s listened to Parenteau over the years knows that, given the choice, he never does anything quietly.” Johnson proved to be a prophet as his prediction of a mischievous outcome came true the very same day his Boston Herald article hit the streets.
On that 5 November, the soon-to-be-unemployed disc jockey honored a promise to appear at the prestigious Achievement in Radio (AIR) Awards being presented at the Marriot Long Wharf in Boston. Tom Bergeron hosted the glittering affair while Mayor Thomas Menino attended to present WBZ-AM’S morning anchor, Gary LaPierre, with a Lifetime Achievement Award. “But while Bergeron got a lot of laughs and LaPierre got a standing ovation, the real attraction in the crowd was DJ Mark Parenteau, who was just cut from WBCN-FM after 20 years at the station,” Susan Bickelhaupt reported the next morning in the Boston Globe. “Parenteau showed he was a trouper and filled his commitment to present an award. And he managed to use his air time at the mike to get some barbs in, noting that, ‘I feel like I have shaken baby syndrome . . . but hey, life goes on,’ and that the CBS [Television] ‘Welcome Home’ slogan should be ‘Welcome Homeless.’”
“It was just the right line at the right time,” Parenteau chuckled. “Everybody woke up to headlines about me in the Globe and the Herald; it really embarrassed CBS, and Oedipus banned me from the station. I was quickly excommunicated and not allowed to do a final, farewell show.”
Amid the daily drama of Parenteau’s battle with Opie and Anthony, it barely registered that there were some other lineup changes that had occurred. In June ’97, Matt Schaffer returned to WBCN to reassume his duties as host of the “Boston Sunday Review.” “Sometimes you can go home again,” he told the Boston Globe after Oedipus hired his good friend back on a part-time basis to host the public affairs show, now on Sundays 7:00–9:00 a.m. The same week Schaffer went back on the payroll, Bradley Jay announced he was leaving to pursue his quest of being a talk-radio jock, vacating the midday slot he had filled after Ken Shelton departed. Oedipus told the Globe, “He wants to do something different, he wants to be a hip Larry King.” Just before leaving, the jock hosted an intimate gathering of 104 WBCN listeners in a Q & A session and performance with his hero David Bowie, live on the air at Fort Apache Studios in Cambridge. As Jay exited on this personal high note, Bill Abbate, who would also burn the midnight oil preparing for his weekly role during Patriots season, moved in. “It was a long transition for me to get to middays; I would do that shift up until September 2001.” Like his two predecessors, Abbate loved the show for the many opportunities it afforded him to interview artists: “Lenny Kravitz came in, multiple times; that was always fun. Green Day showed up to be guest jocks once, and at the end of that visit, Tre Cool lit up this huge joint, right in the studio where the guests would sit . . . underneath the giant vent for the air conditioning!” Abbate watched in amusement as the smoke sauntered slowly upwards to be whisked into the opening and channeled to some distant part of the station. “Then, wouldn’t you know it, all the sales people suddenly showed up in the studio!”
Oedipus had another pair of big shoes to fill once Mark Parenteau had been bumped from his afternoon radio home after two decades. The program director found his replacement in-house with a jock he had hired the year before to stake out the night shift when Stern moved off tape delay and into the mornings. “We had all been trying out for that evening shift,” Neal Robert remembered, “but I felt my chances were diminishing. My forte was being a music person: a guy who was not bigger than the songs, but a companion on your journey with the music. But at that point, Oedipus really wanted another shock-jock on at night; he wanted ‘the talk.’” The program director hired the vociferous and outspoken Nik Carter, who had worked with Robert at WFNX for seven years before landing a gig on the morning show at “The Edge” (WDGE) in Providence. “I was very familiar with Nik from his days at WFNX,” Oedipus related. “A natural talent, he was one of those rare individuals who spontaneously always had something to say that was both interesting and entertaining. Plus, he was a contemporary music aficionado, the future of WBCN.”
“I came out of the ‘alternative radio’ culture, and even though ’BCN was now ‘alternative,’ it hadn’t yet developed into what it said it was. Being the heritage station, [it] had jocks who had been there forever, but for want of a better term, they weren’t living the ‘lifestyle.’ It was like you were listening to the greatest basketball players ever, and now they were being asked to play baseball.” Oedipus encouraged Carter not to hold back but unloose his raucous and unfiltered style in a radio show dubbed “Nik at Night,” upping the ante of Bradley Jay’s previous “Sex Palace” and adding music to a Howard Stern–like attitude.
Once again, not everybody welcomed the new hire at ’BCN, nor the attitude he brought with him; Bob Mendelsohn, for example, thought Carter was “not a mature talent” but “a smart-ass punk.” The new jock, however, pointed out that he felt he was carrying on the station’s longtime mission: “I grew up in Cambridge listening to ’BCN; you were going to hear Stevie Ray Vaughan and Don Henley, but you were also going to hear some weird new band. More importantly, it was a cultural beacon: that’s where my friends and I heard that Bob Marley had died; we were just
devastated. And it was a station with a conscience: whether it was Charles railing against Shell Oil for apartheid or whatever crusade it went on, you always felt that ’BCN was going to come down on the side of right.” Influenced as he was by the station’s past, the new DJ ran with the crowd of eighteen- to thirty-four-year-old males that ’BCN now had to win. Accepted as one of their own, he was a representative who played the music of their generation. What a lot of them didn’t realize, at first anyway, was his skin color. Jim Sullivan wrote in the Boston Globe in November ’97: “Carter is a black man swimming in an ocean populated by a lot of very white men. Most of the DJS and most of the bands in his world are Caucasian. Black DJS? They’re over at the urban dance or contemporary hit stations.”
Nik Carter (center bottom) poses with Green Day. Also pictured from WBCN (left to right) Carter Alan, John Reilly, and Steve Strick. Courtesy of WBCN.